Oskar & Eli. In very different ways, they were both victims. Which is why, against the odds, they became friends. & how they came to depend on one another, for life itself. Oskar is a 12 year old boy living with his mother on a dreary housing estate at the city's edge. He dreams about his absentee father, gets bullied at school, & wets himself when he's frightened. Eli is the young girl who moves in next door. She doesn't go to school & never leaves the flat by day. She is a 200 year old vampire, forever frozen in childhood, & condemned to live on a diet of fresh blood. John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel is a unique & brilliant fusion of social novel & vampire legend, a deeply moving fable about rejection, friendship & loyalty.